Professional Development

One of the most important things in class today was when we talked about the purpose of professional development. The purpose of professional development should not be focused on teachers but should be focused on increasing student achievement. This makes perfect sense in education and makes sure that students are the center of the schools. It seems that much of our professional development is wasted on things that don’t focus on student achievement but instead focus on other things. In fact, it seems schools in general would be more successful if they would always make decisions based upon increasing student achievement. It also seems that individual teachers would be more successful if they always focused on student achievement instead of other things. 100% focus on this will probably never happen but getting closer to having everyone focus on student achievement would certainly help.